Edgar Allan Poe - Selected Tales 1

Selected Tales
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.
De Béranger.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn
of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I
had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary
tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the
evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I
know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a
sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for
the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-
like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I
can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-
dream of the reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day
life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a
sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of
thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into
aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it

Edgar Allan Poe Selected Tales
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that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It
was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there
are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the
power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon
this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and
lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed
down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon
the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the
ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself
a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been
one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached
me in a distant part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its
wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal
reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke
of acute bodily illness—of a mental disorder which oppressed him,
and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only
personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my
society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which
all this, and much more, was said—it was the apparent heart that
went with his request—which allowed me no room for hesitation;
and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very
singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I
really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive
and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had

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been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of
temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of
exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent,
yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-
honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch;
in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent,
and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so
lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in
thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with
the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon
the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
might have exercised upon the other—it was this deficiency,
perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating
transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name,
which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original
title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the
“House of Usher”—an appellation which seemed to include, in the
minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family
mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment of looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the
first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition—for why
should I not so term it?—served mainly to accelerate the increase
itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all
sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this
reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself,
from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy—
a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid
force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon

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my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion
and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with
the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees,
and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor,
dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I
scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal
feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The
discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the
whole exterior, hanging in a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves.
Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No
portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild
inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much
that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which
has rotted for years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of
extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.
Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a
barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the
building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction,
until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.
A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic
archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me,
in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress
to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of
which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while
the carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, the
ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial
trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to

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such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I
hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still
wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary
images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the physician
of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and
ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance
from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through
the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the
more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain
to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the
vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The
general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.
Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed
to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere
of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over
and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been
lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which
had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the
constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance,
however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity.
We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed
upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had
never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick
Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the
identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early
boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times
remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid,

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and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very
pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate
Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar
formations; a finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of
prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion
above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance
not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they
were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom
I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous
luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The
silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in
its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I
could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with
any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from
a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by
reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His
action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly
from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly
in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt,
weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—that
leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance,
which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable
eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of

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his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
one for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous
affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon
pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of
these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although,
perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had
their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the
senses. The most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear
only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were
oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there
were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments,
which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.
“I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus,
thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the
future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—
in this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner or later
arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some
struggle with the grim phantasm, Fear.”
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He
was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had
never ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose
supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be
restated—an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form
and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance,
he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the physique of the
gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked

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down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his
existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of
the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a
more natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and long-
continued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for
long years, his last and only relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said,
with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him (him
the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.”
While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed
slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without
having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread; and yet I found it
impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor
oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a
door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face
in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which
trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily
borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken
herself finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my
arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night
with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the
destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her
person would thus probably be the last I should obtain—that the
lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

9
For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either
Usher or myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest
endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and
read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild
improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still
closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of
his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt
at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive
quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical
universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I
thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should
fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me
the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a
sulphurous luster over all. His long, improvised dirges will ring
forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a
certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the
last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his
elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into
vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly because I
shuddered knowing not why,—from these paintings (vivid as their
images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to deduce more
than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his
designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted
an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least—in the
circumstances then surrounding me—there arose out of the pure
abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his
canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
concrete reveries of Fuseli.

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One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking
not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth,
although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of
an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain
accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that
this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the
earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and
no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood
of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly
and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps,
the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar,
which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his
performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be
so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as
well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations), the result
of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I
have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of
the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these
rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or
mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the
first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering
of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled
“The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

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I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)

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In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travelers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically

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To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of
Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for
other men have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with
which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that
of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy,
the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed,
under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I
lack words to express the full extent or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously
hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The
conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in
the method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread
them, and of the decayed trees which stood around—above all, in
the long-undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its
reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence—the
evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said (and I here
started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of an
atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result
was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and
terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of
his family, and which made him what I now saw him—what he was.
Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small
portion of the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be

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supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We
pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of
Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of
Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by
Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of
De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the
City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small
octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium, by the Dominican
Eymeric de Cironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela,
about the old African Satyrs and Œgipans, over which Usher would
sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic—
the manual of a forgotten church—the Vigiliae Mortuorum
secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening,
having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more,
he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight
(previously to its final interment) in one of the numerous vaults
within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however,
assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel
at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so
he told me, by consideration of the unusual character of the malady
of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part
of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the
burial ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to
mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the
staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to
oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means
an unnatural precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having
been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which

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we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches,
half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little
opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without
means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately
beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping
apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for
the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of
deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as
a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway
through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper.
The door, of massive iron, had been also similarly protected. Its
immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it
moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this
region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of
the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking
similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my
attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured
out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and
himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however,
rested not long upon the dead—for we could not regard her unawed.
The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of
youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical
character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face,
and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible
in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured
the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less
gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend.
His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were
neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with

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hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance
had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness
of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his
tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme
terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times,
indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring
with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the
necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into
the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing
upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest
attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder
that his condition terrified—that it infected me. I felt creeping upon
me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influence of his own
fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I
struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over
me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was
due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the
room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into
motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro
upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the
bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually
pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an
incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and
a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly
within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not
why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low
and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm,
at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense
sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my

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clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition
into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the
apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance
was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species
of mad hilarity in his eyes—and evidently restrained hysteria in his
whole demeanor. His air appalled me—but anything was preferable
to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed
his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared
about him for some moments in silence—”You have not then seen
it?—but stay! you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely
open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent
and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had
no glimpse of the moon or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of
the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly

18
visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
mansion.
“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly,
to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
seat. “These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon—or it may be that they have their
ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this
casement—the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is
one of your favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen;—and
so we will pass away this terrible night together.”
The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of
Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth
and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the
lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only
book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
he hearkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I
might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my
design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where
Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable
admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good
an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the
narrative run thus:
“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who
was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine
which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the
hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but,
feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the

19
tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly
room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now
pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all
asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood
alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest.”
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some
very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my
ears what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the
echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested
or disturbed me. I continued the story:
“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door,
was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful
hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
of shining brass with this legend enwritten—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it,
the like whereof was never before heard.”

20
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
sound—the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already
conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the
romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second
and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting
sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant,
I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any
observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by
no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question;
although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few
minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my
own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his
face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially
perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he
were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast—
yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening
of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body,
too, was at variance with this idea—for he rocked from side to side
with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken
notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which
thus proceeded:
“And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of
the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the
breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the
carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously
over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon
the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down

21
at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible
ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield
of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and
clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely
unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement
of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His
eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand
upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole
person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke
in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my
presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous
import of his words.
“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—
long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet
I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—
I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that
my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble
movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days
ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—
Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-
cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the
rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison,
and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh,
whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to
upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair?
Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?
Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out
his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—”Madman!
I tell you that she now stands without the door!”

22
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been
found the potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to which the
speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their
ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but
then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded
figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her
white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every
portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a
low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother,
and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor
a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The
storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the
old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was
that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone
vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have
before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—
there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the
satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the
mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous
shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep
and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the “House of Usher.”
The Masque of the Red Death
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator and its seal—

23
the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and
sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with
dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon
the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from
the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole
seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents
of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.
When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his
presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep
seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and
magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet
august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates
of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy
hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means
neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of
frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such
precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The
external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly
to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of
pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were
ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was
wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red
Death”.
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,
and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the
Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of
the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell
of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial
suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight
vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either

24
hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here
the case was very different; as might have been expected from the
duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly
disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time.
There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each
turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall,
a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor
which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of
stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing
hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at
the eastern extremity was hung, for example in blue—and vividly
blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its
ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third
was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was
furnished and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth
with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black
velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,
falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.
But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to
correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a
deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there
any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments
that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was
no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite
of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there
stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of
fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly
illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy
and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the
effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through
the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so
wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there

25
were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts
at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the
western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and
fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-
hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken,
there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was
clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar
a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of
the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their
performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce
ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole
gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was
observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate
passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or
meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter
at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other
and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made
whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the
clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after
the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six
hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.
The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and
effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were
bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre.
There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt
that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to
be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his

26
own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders.
Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and
piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen in
"Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and
appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman
fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton,
much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that
which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers
there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the
dreams—writhed in, and about, taking hue from the rooms, and
causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their
steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the
hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent
save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand.
But the echoes of the chime die away—they have endured but an
instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they
depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and
writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many
tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But
to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are
now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away;
and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and
the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls
upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a
muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their
ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other
apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them
beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on,
until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the
clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions
of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of
all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded

27
by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of
thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the
thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened,
perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly
sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had
found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure
which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And
the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly
around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or
murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of
terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well
be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such
sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly
unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and
gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be
touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life
and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be
made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that
in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety
existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to
foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the
visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened
corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting
the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved,
by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to
assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in
blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was
besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image
(which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain
its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be

28
convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror
or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.
“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood
near him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?
Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to
hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince
Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout seven
rooms loudly and clearly—for the prince was a bold and robust man,
and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of
pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight
rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder,
who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate
and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a
certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the
mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who
put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a
yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with
one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he
made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and
measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through
the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to the green—
through the green to the orange—through this again to the white—
and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been
made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero,
maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary
cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none
followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all.
He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid
impetuosity, to with-in three or four feet of the retreating figure,
when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet
apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was

29
a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable
carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the
Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a
throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black
apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect
and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in
unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by
any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He
had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the
revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in
the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock
went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the
tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held
illimitable dominion over all.
The Tell-Tale Heart
True! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but
why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my
senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of
hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I
heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and
observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but,
once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was
none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never
wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no
desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes
resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye with a film over it.
Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very

30
gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and
thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.
But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I
proceeded; with what caution, with what foresight, with what
dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man
than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night
about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh, so
gently! And then when I had made an opening sufficient for my head
I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed so that no light shone out,
and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see
how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so
that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to
place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him
as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as
this? And then when my head was well in the room I undid the
lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously (for the hinges
creaked), I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the
vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at
midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible
to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil
Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the
chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a
hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see
he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that
every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in
opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than
did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own
powers, of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of
triumph. To think that there I was opening the door little by little,
and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly
chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the

31
bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back—
but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for
the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I
knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept
pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern when my
thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in
the bed, crying out, "Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not
move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down.
He was still sitting up in the bed, listening; just as I have done night
after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of
mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no! it was
the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when
overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at
midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own
bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted
me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him,
although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake
ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His
fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to
fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself,
"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing
the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp."
Yes, he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions;
but he had found all in vain. All in vain, because Death in
approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and
enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the
unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither
saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing
him lie down, I resolved to open a little— a very, very little crevice

32
in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily—
until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out
from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon
it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue with a hideous
veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see
nothing else of the old man's face or person, for I had directed the
ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness
is but over-acuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my
ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped
in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old
man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates
the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held
the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray
upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It
grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder, every instant. The
old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say,
louder every moment!—do you mark me well? I have told you that I
am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid
the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this
excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I
refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I
thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me—
the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man's hour had
come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the
room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to
the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to
find the deed so far done. But for many minutes the heart beat on
with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not
be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was
dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone,

33
stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many
minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would
trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I
describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the
body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence.
I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and
deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so
cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—could
have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no
stain of any kind—no bloodspot whatever. I had been too wary for
that.
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock—
still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a
knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light
heart—for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who
introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police.
A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion
of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the
police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the
premises.
I smiled—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome.
The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I
mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the
house. I bade them search—search well. I led them, at length, to his
chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the
enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and
desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the
wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the
very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was
singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they
chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and

34
wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my
ears; but still they sat, and still chatted. The ringing became more
distinct;—it continued and became more distinct. I talked more
freely to get rid of the feeling, but it continued and gained
definitiveness—until, at length, I found that the noise was not
within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale; but I talked more fluently and
with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could
I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch
makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the
officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but
the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a
high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily
increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro
with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the
men—but the noise steadily increased. O God! what could I do? I
foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been
sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all
and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still
the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard
not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they
knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought,
and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything
was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical
smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!—and now—
again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—
tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous
heart!"

35
The Cask of Amontillado
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but
when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well
know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave
utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point
definitively settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was
resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but
punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger
fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given
Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont,
to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was
at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards
he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on
his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso
spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time
and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and
Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary Fortunato, like his
countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was
sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was
skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I
could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of
the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me
with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man
wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his
head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased
to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his
hand.

36
I said to him—"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How
remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe
of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe! Impossible! And in the
middle of the carnival!"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the
full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You
were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a
critical turn, it is he. He will tell me—"
"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your
own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I
perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi—"
"I have no engagement;—come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with
which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp.
They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing.
Amontillado! You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he
cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting
on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my
person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.

37
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make
merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return
until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir
from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure
their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was
turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to
Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the
archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding
staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at
length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp
ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap
jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," said he.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which
gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy
orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh!
ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!"
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is
precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy,
as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter.
We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides,
there is Luchesi—"
"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill
me. I shall not die of a cough."

38
"True—true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of
alarming you unnecessarily—but you should use all proper caution.
A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long
row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me
familiarly, while his bells jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a
serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel."
"And the motto?"
"Nemo me impune lacessit."
"Good!" he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy
grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled
bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost
recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold
to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the
vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle
among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your
cough—"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of
the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flaçon of De Grâve. He emptied it at a
breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw
the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.

39
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement—a
grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said.
"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds
of my roquelaire.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed
to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again
offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our
route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of
low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at
a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux
rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less
spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the
vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three
sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner.
From the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay
promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of
some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the
bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet,
in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been
constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the
interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the

40
catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of
solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored
to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light
did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi—"
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped
unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an
instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his
progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment
more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two
iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally.
From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock.
Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few
seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist.
Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling
the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to
return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render
you all the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from
his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of
which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered
a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and
with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance
of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered
that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off.
The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the
depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was
then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the

41
third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the
chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I
might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors
and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I
resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the
sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level
with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the
mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from
the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back.
For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier,
I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an
instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the
catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to
the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed
them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew
still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had
completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a
portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single
stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I
placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from
out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It
was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising
as that of the noble Fortunate. The voice said—
"Ha! ha! ha!—he! he!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent jest.
We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo—he! he! he!—
over our wine—he! he! he!"
"The Amontillado!" I said.
"He! he! he!—he! he! he!—yes, the Amontillado. But is it not
getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady
Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes,"I said, "let us be gone."

42
"For the love of God, Montresor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew
impatient. I called aloud—
"Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again—
"Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture
and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of
the bells. My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the
catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last
stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I
re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no
mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
The Imp of the Perverse
In the consideration of the faculties and impulses—of the prima
mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make
room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a
radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally
overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In the pure
arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have suffered
its existence to escape our senses, solely through want of belief—of
faith;—whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith in the Kabbala. The
idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its
supererogation. We saw no need of the impulse—for the propensity.
We could not perceive its necessity. We could not understand, that
is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this
primum mobile ever obtruded itself;—we could not have
understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects
of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot be denied that

43
phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism have been
concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man, rather than the
understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs—
to dictate purposes to God. Having thus fathomed, to his
satisfaction, the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he
built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology,
for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the
design of the Deity that man should eat. We then assigned to man
an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which
the Deity compels man, will-I nill-I, into eating. Secondly, having
settled it to be God's will that man should continue his species, we
discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith. And so with
combativeness, with ideality, with causality, with
constructiveness,—so, in short, with every organ, whether
representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure
intellect. And in these arrangements of the Principia of human
action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon
the whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their
predecessors: deducing and establishing every thing from the
preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of
his Creator.
It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if
classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally
did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis
of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we
cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his
inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot
understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his
substantive moods and phases of creation?
Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit,
as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical
something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more
characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile

44
without motive, a motive not motivirt. Through its promptings we
act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as
a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to
say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we
should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in
fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain
conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain
that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any
action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and
alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming
tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or
resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse-
elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts
because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a
modification of that which ordinarily springs from the
combativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of
this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the
necessity of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its
principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is
excited simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the
desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle
which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the
case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be
well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment
exists.
An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the
sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and
thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the
entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more
incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some
period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to
tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he
displeases; he has every intention to please, he is usually curt,

45
precise, and clear, the most laconic and luminous language is
struggling for utterance upon his tongue, it is only with difficulty
that he restrains himself from giving it flow; he dreads and
deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet, the thought
strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses this anger
may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse
increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an
uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and
mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is
indulged.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We
know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important
crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and
action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the
work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls
are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it
off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we
feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the
principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety
to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a
nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for
delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last
hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the
conflict within us,—of the definite with the indefinite—of the
substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus
far, it is the shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock
strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the
chanticleer—note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It
flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will
labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—
we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the
danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and

46
dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable
feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes
shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius
in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's
edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than
any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought,
although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our
bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the
idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping
precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing
annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most
ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images
of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our
imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire
it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink,
therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no
passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who,
shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.
To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be
inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore
it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or
if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the
abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them
resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse. We perpetrate them
because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is
no intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this
perverseness a direct instigation of the Arch-Fiend, were it not
occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.
I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your
question, that I may explain to you why I am here, that I may assign
to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause
for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the

47
condemned. Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have
misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me
mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many
uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.
It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a
more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered
upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes,
because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At
length, in reading some French Memoirs, I found an account of a
nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the
agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy
at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that
his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you
with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by
which I substituted, in his bed-room candle-stand, a wax-light of my
own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he
was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner's verdict was—
"Death by the visitation of God."
Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The
idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the
fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a
clew by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me
of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction
arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a
very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment.
It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly
advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at length an
epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely
perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It
harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an
instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the
ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of
some ordinary song, or some unimpressive snatches from an opera.

48
Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the
opera air meritorious. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually
catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low
undertone, the phrase, "I am safe."
One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in
the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit
of petulance, I remodelled them thus; "I am safe—I am safe—yes—
if I be not fool enough to make open confession!"
No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep
to my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity,
(whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I
remembered well that in no instance I had successfully resisted their
attacks. And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might
possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been
guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had
murdered—and beckoned me on to death.
At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I
walked vigorously—faster—still faster—at length I ran. I felt a
maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought
overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well
understood that to think, in my situation, was to be lost. I still
quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded
thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued
me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out
my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my
ears—a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned—I gasped
for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation;
I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend,
I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long
imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul.
They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with
marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption

49
before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned
me to the hangman and to hell.
Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial
conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon.
But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am
here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless!—but where?
The Murders In The Rue Morgue
What song the Syrens sang, or what name
Achilles assumed when he hid himself among
women, although puzzling questions, are not
beyond all conjecture.
Sir Thomas Browne.
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in
themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them
only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that
they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a
source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his
physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into
action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which
disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of
conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a
degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension
præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and
essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.
The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by
mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it
which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations,

50
has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not
in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without
effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects
upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now
writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar
narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore,
take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective
intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the
unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of
chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre
motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is
mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention
is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an
oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible
moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such
oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more
concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In
draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but
little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and
the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what
advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior
acumen. To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts
where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no
oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be
decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché
movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.
Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the
spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not
unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime
indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or
hurry into miscalculation.
Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed
the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have

Edgar Allan Poe - Selected Tales 1

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Edgar Allan Poe - Selected Tales 1